


More Alike Than Most

by Silex



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loyalty, POV Nonhuman, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23135872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: All species are born blessed, it’s in meeting other species that they learn disparity and want. Derlit 875 came to that conclusion shortly after receiving his host. The then nameless Taxxon had been euphoria.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8
Collections: Teratophilia Trade 2020





	More Alike Than Most

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Resilur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resilur/gifts).



All species are born blessed, it’s in meeting other species that they learn disparity and want. Derlit 875 came to that conclusion shortly after receiving his host. The then nameless Taxxon had been euphoria.

To see!

To feel sensations that, until then, he had heard of, but never understood.

Even the bottomless hunger was something to revel in.

Knowing cold, knowing discomfort of new varieties, simply knowing was a thing to treasure.

It was such a sharp contrast to the warm, floating contentment of before, drifting without knowing lack.

After too short a time of acclimation, because hosts, even Taxxons, were in short supply, Derlit began pilot training. The Taxxon, with its many limbs and eyes always seeking movement and the promise of food that came with it, was perfect. It was as though it became an extension of the ship as much as it was an extension of Derlit.

The Taxxon’s hunger was constant, fresh meat a reward for both the Taxxon and, through it, Derlit. He saw how Taxxons could become a trap, the Yeerk losing themselves to the mindless, desperate hunger and while Derlit couldn’t speak for other Taxxon controllers, or even for himself when he was in his host, but there was something more to his Taxxon.

Fear of starvation was constant, even while piloting a ship when there shouldn’t have been room for any distractions, but it was different then.

Thought-fast reactions, split second decisions and stars and sky all around, ground streaking past below, eyes constantly scanning the instrument panel, there was hunger.

Different than the hunger that could be assuaged, however fleetingly, by food.

It was a feeling Derlit could relate to, from his own time out of his host, again blind and helpless. The Taxxon yearned, not just for food, but for the skies and the freedom that they represented.

Derlit didn’t understand it exactly at that point, but the yearning was something he could relate to.

That connection, however tenuous, was the start of something.

The Taxxon had thoughts, desires, so much more than mere hunger. Like all Taxxons, it had joined the Yeerks out of desperation, the promise of food and something more than the constant fear of starvation.

Before the Taxxon Derlit had felt the same way, floating and waiting, hoping that he would be one of the ones lucky enough to get a host and the chance that it represented.

In time Derlit tried, as some did, to establish communication with the Taxxon. It was a complacent host, used to not being in control of its body even before Derlit took control for it and talking to it didn’t seem unreasonable.

The first thing he learned was that it envied him.

The Taxxons, all of them, knew that they were unique amongst species, in their hunger.

To it Derlit’s blind and helpless existence, floating in a pool, was paradise.

The Taxxon would have happily torn off its own limbs, eaten itself alive, to have escaped its hunger in the same way that Derlit was willing to embrace that hunger for the sake of being able to see and act beyond his own helpless form.

Piloting a ship, what the Andalites derisively called bug-ships, was different form of escape for the Taxxon, the focus needed temporarily blocking out the hunger for seconds, sometimes minutes at a time.

It got Derlit thinking, what if all species felt like the two of them.

Did the Hork-Bajir know that they were mentally inferior to others and wish to comprehend the things they knew were beyond them?

And if that were so, then what did the Andalites desire?

Given what they had done, giving and taking, waging war when things slipped beyond their control, did the Andalites envy the Yeerks for their ability to control other beings?

It was something that he and the Taxxon discussed.

Control, the Taxxon agreed, was very important.

Derlit could stop it after all, more than it could on its own, and there were times it resented Derlit for that. It wanted to be the one in control of itself, even when Derlit wasn’t there.

Especially when Derlit wasn’t there, for then it had to manage on its own.

To the Taxxon it made sense that the Andalites would want to be like Yeerks, after all, with their morphing technology and ruthlessness, control seemed to be what they valued above all else.

Derlit was tempted to ask his copilot in their Hork-Bajir their thoughts on the matter, but they were like the Taxxon – hungry.

Hungry for promotion. They’d wanted a human host and the promise of further advancement that such a body held and regarded Derlit with scorn.

He responded in kind, ignoring them unless his duty required it, content to focus on secret conversations with his Taxxon.

A Taxxon that like all others, was without a name.

Until on a whim, Derlit named it. Itsra 1, because it was unique and because he had a certain distain for authority. Naming the Taxxon and giving it such a designation seemed like a safe outlet for his feelings.

Not to mention it appealed to his sense of humor.

Itsra was pleased with the name, having something else to set it apart from the rest of its kind, but corrected him. As a pilot in understood numbers and bearings and it understood Derlit’s number, its significance. If they were together by the Taxxon’s logic, it was Itsra 875. When they were apart it could be Itsra 1 because it was singular, but it preferred when it was with Derlit.

Derlit was more than its controller, he was its control.

Eventually their teamwork paid off, or perhaps it was simply inertia and numbers, and they were promoted to the Earth front of the war.

They ended up with a new Hork-Bajir controller for a partner when their previous partner got their longed for promotion.

When Derlit first arrived there wasn’t yet open combat at Earth, simply ferrying supplies back and forth and occasionally living cargo, portable pools and their occupants.

For how easy it was, it was still stressful duty. Itsra was an unshakable intrusive thought, constant urges of violence and hunger, suggesting that they eat the other Yeerks for reasons it couldn’t explain, hoping that the fight would go to the ground and that it might be able to eat and eat and eat until it was content.

Derlit tried to distract it, made a game of it until they were back in the blue of Earth’s sky and all its endless distractions.

Seeing Earth he understood why it was such an important planet in the war.

So many humans, so many potential controllers, a population impossibly large.

Enough meat to satisfy even a Taxxon, was Itsra’s thought on the matter.

For the first time in his life Derlit tried to imagine billions.

And then Itsra was the one to raise the question of what all of those billions of humans might long for when they had so much.

From his dealings with human controllers Derlit could see that they combined the best traits of all previously encountered species and added so much more to it all.

They were perfect.

Derlit’s success meant that he was offered a promotion, it was how he went from 875 to 638. A small advancement, but an advancement none the less.

With the promotion came an opportunity, a new host.

A human host.

Greater freedom than he’d known, a step beyond a Taxxon, unimaginably far based on what he was told.

But Itsra had taken the promotion with him and the next Yeerk it would be given to would know him in the way it had.

The thought, that he would be known by another the way he knew Itsra was unthinkable, secrets laid bare. They would know that Itsra was Itsra 638 when they were together and Itsra 1 when alone.

In that Derlit knew what he longed for, to keep his secrets, to have something unique that no other had.

He kept Itsra, explaining that he was accustomed to the Taxxon and didn’t wish to learn a new host and then relearn how to fly.

His answer was accepted without question.

He wasn’t the first Yeerk to want to keep a preferred host and there were members of the Council who had kept their Taxxons.

There _had_ to be a reason for it.

Derlit saw more and more of Earth and its skies. It was a fascinating place, one he wanted to see more of.

Itsra saw the abundance of animals and wondered how they would taste, the feel of them breaking between his teeth. Perhaps, the Taxxon wondered, one of them would finally leave it satiated.

Thanks to their success Itsra got to try many of them. None were the one it sought, but the variety of tastes and textures were enough that even Derlit could appreciate the different sensations that came with eating them and understood why Itsra had certain favorites. With those he never tried to slow Itsra, relinquishing control in as much as he was able, as though one could ever hope to have much control over a Taxxon’s hunger, so that Itsra could enjoy them as it wished.

As fast as possible and then licking the floor clean or, when outside, eating the ground where any blood had fallen.

Some saw and worried that he had a hard time controlling his host, but his piloting skills were beyond reproach. _Their_ piloting skills.

It was as much Itsra as it was him.

Piloting the ship there were moments of meditative stillness to the Taxxon’s mind. The hunger was still there, but distant. The memory of pain rather than the actual sensation.

The moments never lasted, but Itsra had a way of putting it.

_Eating the sky._

There was a certain poetry to Itsra’s thoughts, though maybe some of it was him imagining. Yeerks who spent any length of time in a Taxxon host were regarded as mentally unbalanced, so it was possible that he was, just in a different way than most.

He certainly wasn’t _as_ prone to fits of mindless savagery as some of the others he’d met.

The more time that passed the more of that sort he met, some of them out ranking them.

And of course there were the Vissers and sub-Vissers who could be even more savage than any Taxxon, regardless of their hosts. How progress was being made in the war when they all seemed so focused on one-upping each other was beyond Derlit. Even Itsra, with his simple way of viewing things couldn’t come up with an explanation.

As the war went on the more inexplicable things he encountered.

There were the stories of the Andalite bandits of course, an unknown number of cells of guerilla soldiers, always attacking in the same number and same Earth animal morphs to hide their true numbers. Visser 3 claimed that there was only one group of them, that the Andalite was always the same one, but Derlit had his own thoughts about the Visser, not that he ever gave voice to them.

Besides, all Andalites looked the same.

Itsra, with its morbid humor would always add to that the question of whether or not they all tasted the same.

To that Derlit would add that when the war was over there would be plenty of Andalites for him to eat and find out.

Of course he didn’t want to end up in a situation where he’d actually be fighting Andalites, just letting Itsra eat them and he considered himself lucky in that any combat they saw was from a distance, though on some level Itsra wished to be down there, sinking its teeth into whatever got too close to it.

It was a very Taxxon way of looking at things.

Or maybe it was just a very Itsra thing.

There were missions that Derlit was sent on, by one of his superiors, though they never identified themselves, as he was beneath them. He simply received orders and followed them.

They grew more frequent as time passed, Derlit having proven himself trustworthy and unlikely to ask questions. He knew better than to do that, had seen firsthand what happened to anyone who overstepped their bounds. There was a reason that he and Itsra were sent alone on these missions, without the customary Hork-Bajir controller as their copilot

On one such delivery mission that took him flying over the open ocean the strangest thing happened, a moment that would, in the end, almost be as significant for Derlit as the moment he first entered his first host, though at the time he didn’t even know it.

The waves were high from a distant storm, far enough off that it wasn’t a concern, and Itsra wanted to fly low, in part because it was safe, in part because it would be fun.

They brought the ship lower and it happened, something he couldn’t explain, wouldn’t have believed if not for Itsra being there and confirming it.

He heard singing, wordless, but with a distinctly Yeerk accent, if there could be such a thing. If Derlit had been asked about it he’d have said it sounded like they were singing for the sheer joy of it. It was the same as how Itsra felt when he ate. There was a promise in it, of something more, something that went beyond anything that Derlit had experienced in his life. He wanted to follow it, but there was his mission to consider and, with regret, he adjusted his course.

There were many mysteries he was willing to accept that would be impossible to solve.

Below, some enormous animal moved through the water, large enough that it could be picked up on the ship’s sensors. Itsra wondered, happily, if they would ever get the chance to eat something like that.

It was a pleasant thought for the Taxxon and Derlit made no attempt to discourage it, even if it was more distracting than he would have liked.

Never once did it occur to him that the intersection was planned, that the song was meant for him to hear.

After the mission things went on as normal, or as normal as was possible in the middle of a war that wasn’t going at all as planned. Humans should have been easy to deal with, or so it had been thought, but they put up a surprising amount of resistance.

Though ideal as a species, as individuals they were dangerous in so many ways.

In the conversations he had with Yeerks with human hosts, both in and out of the pool, he learned that even their minds could be dangerous.

Silent screams of rage and despair, begging and bargaining, but also intrusive thoughts that went beyond the hunger of a Taxxon. Some Yeerks even said that they envied Derlit for the simple urges of his host compared to the rage and violence the human mind was capable of. That particular conversation had taken place when both were in their hosts, Itsra sensing weakness in the human had been amusing itself by imagining circumstances where they might fall and give it an excuse to eat them. During the course of the conversation Derlit learned that the human had been refusing to sleep, which made it far less responsive and dulled its senses in a way that took constant effort to combat. Apparently any time the Yeerk controlling it tried to get it to sleep the human would imagine things that terrified it, sending a surge of adrenaline though it and letting it stay awake that much longer.

That was the first time Derlit actually thought about what it would be like to have a host that fought him, rather than Itsra’s obedience.

Until then he’d ignored the stories he’d heard, that there were some who wished to find another species like the Taxxons, a whole race of willing hosts.

It went beyond that though, there were whispers of a peace movement, Yeerks who wanted to work with their hosts to spread that kind of thinking.

They were branded traitors, of course, because their thinking was anathema to the Yeerk Empire.

There were many types of thinking that were anathema to the Yeerk Empire, Derlit thought wryly.

Still, there was a certain appeal to it and perhaps Itsra made him more willing to consider such thoughts with something other than contempt, for Derlit knew that Itsra was unique even for a Taxxon. Its devotion went beyond the desire to satisfy its hunger.

Over time, as his secret missions continued, him being ‘borrowed’ from his usual tasks to run errands on his own, just him and Itsra, Derlit began to put things together.

His cargo, Yeerks and their hosts, ferried back and forth to seemingly random locations, supplies for repairing Kandrona pools where there were no pools to repair, and sometimes simply carrying hardcopy messages.

He never questioned it, the superior giving him the tasks had to be at least a sub-Visser by his reckoning, and there were rumors that someone in the double digits was involved in the peace movement.

Either way he had no desire to risk his life over something like that.

Reporting his suspicions was as likely to end in death as it was promotion, and he had no such ambitions.

Not when it would also put Itsra at risk. The Taxxon had served him well, above and beyond what was expected of it. Derlit owed it to Itsra to keep the two of them safe.

So he kept their head down, followed orders and did what he had to, nothing more, nothing less.

When the war finally ended, in a defeat that had been a long time coming, Derlit had been between missions. He was in a pool on Earth and Itsra was enjoying being able to eat without any of Derlit’s reservations holding it back.

It meant that he didn’t know what happened to the Taxxon and that news of defeat came to him though a chain of tactile and pheromone signals that made the whole pool sour with distress. The war was over and they were prisoners.

Like that he was just another Yeerk in the pool, nameless and faceless to their Andalite captors.

Perhaps they would be returned to their home world and left trapped there, perhaps killing them would be easier and the pool would be broken and they’d be left to dry on the floor.

Or perhaps it would be the slow death of stagnation and starvation when the pool’s support systems were unhooked.

Waiting was agony and only grew worse as word spread.

The humans, with their bizarre sense of justice, wanted trials, much to the Andalites’ bemusement.

Derlit and the others were prisoners of war, waiting to be judged.

Noncombatants and those who had never even gotten the chance to receive hosts were steadily weeded out over time to be sent to an unknown fate. They were to be spared, but what that meant was never explained.

Of course they were swarmed by the others when they went to where their captors waited to scoop them out, but there was only so much that could be done by Yeerks outside of hosts.

And the Andalites were careless when it came to getting those swarms out of the way of whoever was being fished out and brought to whatever awaited them.

Derlit couldn’t blame them, any of them, traitors and loyalists.

They were all so helpless, desperation and pride were all any of them had left.

There were traitors in the pool, of course, those that helped find the Yeerks who had fought when their names were called and those traitors were held in contempt and harried constantly, but that was all that could be done.

In time their numbers dwindled, the traitors outnumbering anyone else, banding together in schools and excluding any who tried to hide amid them.

When Derlit’s name was the one sent through the pool it was no surprise.

He floated in the center of the pool, accepting his fate as the traitors signaled where he was to their captors. There was no denying what he had done, no point in it. The most he could manage was to face his fate with dignity.

Though he had no intent of making it easy for them.

Then it was sent that Itsra 638 was waiting for him.

The name was common enough, but the number couldn’t have been coincidence.

No one else knew that his Itsra was Itsra.

If it was a trick it was an impossible one unless Itsra was alive and had been given to a traitor.

He swam to the edge of the pool and into the hands of a waiting human.

The human, a woman, brought him to her ear and through her he learned of his situation.

He was right in that he’d been unknowingly helping the peace movement, that he’d saved many lives, but more than that, he was being offered a deal that few other Yeerks were being given, to allow himself to be given the Andalites’ morphing technology so that he might choose a form to be trapped in.

There was no need for words, he gleaned all that from the human, and so much more, though the Andalites standing on either side of his temporary host felt the need to inform him of all of it.

“What about Itsra?” He had asked, hating the woman’s voice, clear and so much better suited to expressing his demands than the pidgin that was used by those with Taxxon hosts.

<<Itsra is waiting for you with the other,>> one of the Andalites laughed nervously.

There was a joke to it, one that the human woman didn’t like, though Derlit didn’t bother searching her mind to find out why. The fear was so much more interesting to him.

_Worms_ , was her thought, _centipedes_ and the fear of gnashing teeth and monstrous, crawling things, gnashing teeth and screaming death.

He was seeing Taxxons through the eyes and mind of another, so different than his own experience. The woman could only guess at the hunger and she had no compassion for the desperation and fear of being a Taxxon.

Even if the Andalites hadn’t been there to escort him Derlit would have been able to find his way. The human woman knew the route and that was what he focused on, rather than exploring her mind for answers to the questions he had. For the moment Itsra was what mattered. She had seen it and that was what Derlit chose to focus on, her having just seen Itsra, well fed and unharmed, the two going hand in hand.

Itsra wasn’t alone in the room, there was another Taxxon there, very important going by the woman’s memories, Arbron was the name that went with in.

An Andalite name.

Strange to imagine one in the form of a Taxxon, but there was no time to delve into that, they’d reached their destination, or almost.

There was a door which Derlit tried to open despite knowing from the woman that it was locked.

Taxxons, even Arbron, were too dangerous, too insane to be trusted – the woman’s thoughts, not his.

A whole race insane…

Derlit stopped exploring her thoughts. Even if it was true, he didn’t want to know anyone was thinking of Itsra that way.

One of the Andalites, lean and rangy, fur mottled with lighter patches, laughed as he keyed in the code to open the door.

A Taxxon drew itself up to its full height, even rearing up a little so that its head was on level with those of the Andalites.

Arbron.

And he was irrelevant. Next to him a Taxxon ran in circles in a small enclosure.

Itsra.

Having lived so much of his life in the Taxxon there was no way Derlit wouldn’t have recognized it. The tilt of its head as it looked at him, the way it moved its tail end for balance as it shifted from side to side, all those little legs working in concert.

Seeing Itsra through the eyes of another gave him a chance to wonder – how many of those mannerisms that he was so familiar with belonged to him and how many to it?

They had shared so much.

The woman was afraid, something Derlit gave no thought to as he made her run to Itsra.

His Taxxon.

His actual, real body.

Not the woman he controlled at the moment, not that of a small, soft slug.

A Taxxon.

Arbron stepped between the two of them and Derlit recoiled.

Now the woman’s memories came through.

She had been a controller herself, her original Yeerk part of the peace movement and she had bad memories of Taxxons. After her first Yeerk, Carths 915, had been killed through Kandrona starvation for her part in the movement the woman had been given to a new Yeerk, Tismil 492, and as his host had witnessed several executions by Taxxon. The practice wasn’t uncommon with hosts deemed expendable or too badly damaged to be of use and tended to encourage obedience.

Tismil though, he’d enjoyed those and mocked her for her horror, believing that it was necessary to break one’s host.

<<Thank you Derlit 638,>> the Andalite in Taxxon morph said gravely and with such sincerity that Derlit was taken aback. Hearing gratitude from the likes of an Andalite was impossible, yet it was there.

Derlit couldn’t help but notice that the Andalites turned their heads slightly so they could avert both sets of eyes when their fellow spoke. They respected him, but there was something else, the contempt and disgust innate to their kind vying for place with that respect.

The woman echoed the Andalite’s sentiments, his following orders unquestioningly had done so much for the peace movement, the parts he had unknowingly and unquestioningly been transporting had allowed for countless lives to be saved.

And more importantly, Itsra had spoken on his behalf, insisting that if Derlit had known he would have joined the movement. Until then it had never occurred to Derlit that his treatment of his host was exceptional, he’d felt a duty to the body he inhabited, the same as he and Itsra felt towards their ship, keeping it safe and maintained.

Arbron inclined his upper body forward, <<Few Taxxons and their Yeerks were part of the movement, but those that were have done so much. They are the reason that the Taxxon’s surrender has been accepted and that…>>

The Andalite in Taxxon form paused and turned to look pointedly at the other two Andalites, <<That we have been given a choice other than death or torment. They understand, as few others can, the fear that possesses the whole species and that there is a way out, one that I had hoped for years would be possible. As part of the condition of their breaking their alliance with the Yeerks Taxxons are being given the opportunity to permanently become an Earth animal of their choice.>>

Derlit understood. Taxxons were unique in their hunger, it was what forced them to join the Yeerks, and now the Andalites, at the humans’ urging according to the woman’s memories, were giving them a far better deal than the Yeerks ever could have.

It was a bittersweet feeling, to know that Itsra would finally be free in every sense.

<<Leave Nikki,>> Arbron spoke, naming the woman that Derlit was inside, something that he’d deliberately avoided knowing. He didn’t want to know this woman, to let her be a distraction to his reunion with Itsra.

“Let me – ” A tail blade suddenly at his throat stopped him.

The Andalites were brutal, of course they’d be more than willing to kill a helpless, foolish human woman to kill a Yeerk.

Derlit brought the woman’s, Nikki’s, hands to the side of her head and emerged to spare Itsra the torment that would come from smelling fresh blood.

The Taxxon had always wanted to eat a human, to see if they tasted as different from other creatures as they looked.

Andalite hands quickly snatched him away, dry and hot, the touch making the air seem even colder and drier by comparison.

Was the reunion over then?

_Itsra, enjoy your life. Be happy._

He thought, wishing that he could speak to the Taxxon, as he had wished to.

Eyeless, Derlit could only guess at what was happening when something hard gripped him, some tool of execution no doubt, a clean and sterile way of doing it.

Humans it seemed were as sentimental as Andalites were brutal. Or perhaps they were simply less inclined towards getting their hands dirty.

Then a familiar feeling, a smooth gently curving plane and narrow, twisting hole that he knew as well as his own body.

He and Itsra were truly reunited.

The feeling of stretching across the Taxxon’s mind, the physical and emotional connection.

His own joy at the first time entering the Taxxon was nothing compared to what the Taxxon felt now.

Itsra showed him the other Taxxons, morphing into long, legless creatures and rejoicing. Derlit heard their amazement as they cried out, reveling in the sudden sense of loss, the hunger that had defined them was gone. Most had chosen creatures similar in size of form to themselves, but Itsra was uncertain. Exceptions were made if the desired creature was inoffensive enough and between that and the Yeerk peace movement Itsra wanted to know if Derlit might be allowed to make the same choice as it. Small, innocuous creatures were considered acceptable options for Taxxons that wanted them, and Itsra eagerly encouraged Derlit to experience its thoughts on one such creature.

Humans called it a sparrow, a type of bird, so small and frail, but tenacious in its own way.

And it flew, that was the one constant in Itsra’s thoughts on the creature, it flew.

Itsra had postponed his escape from hunger, petitioned Arbron an Andalite that had been trapped as a Taxxon since the beginning of the war, to find a way to save Derlit.

<<You see?>> Arbron said softly, for just the two of them to hear.

Derlit did see. There were, in all of existence, two good Andalites. Seerow, who had freed the Yeerks and made them so much more, and Arbron who wished to do the same for the Taxxons. And apparently a select few Yeerks.

<<Enough,>> the lean and rangy Andalite snapped, <<No more dawdling.>>

The other held out an unmistakable piece of technology, a morphing cube.

<<The Taxxon’s already picked your morph,>> the one holding the cube said, <<Leave it so we can get this over with.>>

He looked into Itsra’s mind, confirming the animal the Taxxon had chosen, and though it terrified him, Derlit decided that he approved of the choice. Itsra’s ears were keen enough to hear the scraping and fluttering of the bird that sat in the covered cage in a corner of the room and it wanted to eat the little creature more badly than anything it had ever encountered before.

It wanted to eat it in the same way it thought of eating the sky.

_Together we can eat the sky_ , Derlit laughed, feeling giddy having gone from certain that he was about to be killed, to a joyous reunion, to having to accept a future that was uncertain at best, horrifying at worst.

Or it would have been if not for the fact that he was facing it with Itsra.

The form was certainly inoffensive, he had to agree with the Taxxon on that.

No one would know the truth behind, or even notice, two sparrows more alike than most.


End file.
